Gigantic comet heading into our solar system

Web Desk

April 12, 2022

NASA undated handout image shows an artists conception of a storm of comets around a star near our own, called Eta Corvi. Reuters — NASA undated handout image shows an artist's conception of a storm of comets around a star near our own, called Eta Corvi. Reuters

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has calculated the size of the largest icy comet nucleus ever observed by astronomers, NASA reported.

The diameter of the comet is about 80 miles, which makes it larger than Rhode Island. It is shockingly 50 times larger than the known comets with a mass of 500 trillion tons.

According to NASA, the comet has been approaching the Sun for over 1 million years.

A hypothesis suggests that it is coming from the nesting ground of trillions of comets known as the Oort Cloud.

This was first hypothesised in 1950 by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort. However, the Oort Cloud still remains a theory. It is mostly invisible and NASA estimates that its pair of Voyager spacecraft will not be able to reach the inner side of the Oort Cloud for another 300 years.